Difference between revisions of "Eglin-Wideman1986"

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|Author(s)=Peter Eglin; Doug Wideman
 
|Author(s)=Peter Eglin; Doug Wideman
 
|Title=Inequality in professional service encounters: Verbal strategies of control versus task performance in calls to the police
 
|Title=Inequality in professional service encounters: Verbal strategies of control versus task performance in calls to the police
|Tag(s)=EMCA; Service Encounter; Police;  
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|Tag(s)=EMCA; Service Encounter; Police;
 
|Key=Eglin-Wideman1986
 
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|Year=1986
 
|Year=1986
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|Abstract=According  to  the  interactional  form  of  the  professional  dominance  (PD)  thesis  professional  service encounters,  especially of the medical sort,  are arenas of negotiation,  conflict or struggle  in which professional service providers  attempt  to  dominate  lay  service  seekers  through  various  verbal  strategies  for  controlling  the  definition  of the situation,  the interactional agenda and the time and resources expended in the encounter. Prominent among these purported  linguistic strategies are  the use of interruptions,  questions  (and particular  types of questions)  and silences.
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Service seekers are correspondingly said to resist such attempts at control.  In this paper we criticize the PD  thesis as it applies to interruptions and questions through a brief re-examination of some of the analyses by C. West and by Scheff of medical and psychiatric encounters,  and through a longer scrutiny of a corpus of calls to the police. Not finding any evidence  of  these  verbal  control  strategies  we  propose  an  alternative  ethnomethodological  (conversation-analytic) account of the occurrence  of overlaps  (in West’s data)  and of the  so-called  ‘abruptness’,  ‘constraining  influence’  and ‘asymmetry’  of  questions  in  calls  to  the  police.  We  locate  these  apparent  features  in  a  general  account  of  the interactional shape of the calls, an account which sees that shape as a concerted accomplishment of the parties to them.
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That  accomplishment,  we  claim,  derives  from  the  parties’ mutual  orientation  to  (a)  the  occasion  of  the  call  as  one directed  to  the  performance  of  a  set  of  tasks,  which  establish  (b)  the  relevance  of  co-identification  in  terms  of  a
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particular set of identities and  (c)  a characteristic distribution of speakers’  rights  to  turns at  talk. While not disputing (here)  the structural version of the PD  thesis we wish  to  replace  the  interactional version of it by an  approach which begins to address how the institutional interaction reproducing that structure is produced as such in the first place.
 
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Latest revision as of 05:01, 26 January 2019

Eglin-Wideman1986
BibType ARTICLE
Key Eglin-Wideman1986
Author(s) Peter Eglin, Doug Wideman
Title Inequality in professional service encounters: Verbal strategies of control versus task performance in calls to the police
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Service Encounter, Police
Publisher
Year 1986
Language
City
Month
Journal Zeitschrift für Soziologie
Volume 15
Number 5
Pages 341-62
URL
DOI
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

According to the interactional form of the professional dominance (PD) thesis professional service encounters, especially of the medical sort, are arenas of negotiation, conflict or struggle in which professional service providers attempt to dominate lay service seekers through various verbal strategies for controlling the definition of the situation, the interactional agenda and the time and resources expended in the encounter. Prominent among these purported linguistic strategies are the use of interruptions, questions (and particular types of questions) and silences. Service seekers are correspondingly said to resist such attempts at control. In this paper we criticize the PD thesis as it applies to interruptions and questions through a brief re-examination of some of the analyses by C. West and by Scheff of medical and psychiatric encounters, and through a longer scrutiny of a corpus of calls to the police. Not finding any evidence of these verbal control strategies we propose an alternative ethnomethodological (conversation-analytic) account of the occurrence of overlaps (in West’s data) and of the so-called ‘abruptness’, ‘constraining influence’ and ‘asymmetry’ of questions in calls to the police. We locate these apparent features in a general account of the interactional shape of the calls, an account which sees that shape as a concerted accomplishment of the parties to them. That accomplishment, we claim, derives from the parties’ mutual orientation to (a) the occasion of the call as one directed to the performance of a set of tasks, which establish (b) the relevance of co-identification in terms of a particular set of identities and (c) a characteristic distribution of speakers’ rights to turns at talk. While not disputing (here) the structural version of the PD thesis we wish to replace the interactional version of it by an approach which begins to address how the institutional interaction reproducing that structure is produced as such in the first place.

Notes